ted that her ideas of the navy
must have been derived from Pinafore she laughed. "I can't imagine using
a cat-o'-nine-tails on them!" she exclaimed--and neither could I.
I heard many similar comments. They are indubitably American, these
sailors, youngsters with the stamp of our environment on their features,
keen and self-reliant. I am not speaking now only of those who have
enlisted since the war, but of those others, largely from the small
towns and villages of our Middle West, who in the past dozen years or so
have been recruited by an interesting and scientific system which is the
result of the genius of our naval recruiting officers. In the files at
Washington may be seen, carefully tabulated, the several reasons for
their enlisting. Some have "friends in the service"; others wish to
"perfect themselves in a trade," to "complete their education" or "see
the world"--our adventurous spirit. And they are seeing it. They are
also engaged in the most exciting and adventurous sport--with the
exception of aerial warfare ever devised or developed--that of hunting
down in all weathers over the wide spaces of the Atlantic those
modern sea monsters that prey upon the Allied shipping. For the
superdreadnought is reposing behind the nets, the battle-cruiser
ignominiously laying mines; and for the present at least, until some
wizard shall invent a more effective method of annihilation, victory
over Germany depends primarily on the airplane and the destroyer.
At three o'clock one morning I stood on the crowded deck of an Irish
mail-boat watching the full moon riding over Holyhead Mountain and
shimmering on the Irish Sea. A few hours later, in the early light, I
saw the green hills of Killarney against a washed and clearing sky,
the mud-flats beside the railway shining like purple enamel. All
the forenoon, in the train, I travelled through a country bathed in
translucent colours, a country of green pastures dotted over with white
sheep, of banked hedges and perfect trees, of shadowy blue hills in
the high distance. It reminded one of nothing so much as a
stained-glass-window depicting some delectable land of plenty and peace.
And it was Ireland! When at length I arrived at the station of the port
for which I was bound, and which the censor does not permit me to name,
I caught sight of the figure of our Admiral on the platform; and the
fact that I was in Ireland and not in Emmanuel's Land was brought home
to me by the jolting drive